bookartbookshop

A visit to a unique shop in Shoreditch, London offering artists’ books and serving as a center for individual and institutional collectors, artists, publishers, and the curious. In this micro-documentary you’ll meet Chiara Ambrosio, an artist working at the shop; Tanya Peixoto, the founder; and Natalie D’Arbeloff, a book artist exhibiting her work.

bookartbookshop (2021, 10:17, color, stereo)
Camerawork, direction, and sound recording by David Tamés; Editing by Christina Carroll; Music by Tom Phillips and Tom Martin; End credits by Alice Apley.

The film premiered at the Newburyport Documentary Festival on September 17, 2021, and is now available for online viewing. Official Selection, SHORT to the Point, Bucharest, Romania, October 12, 2021; Nominee, London Film & TV Awards, June 30, 2021.

When I first visited bookartbookshop in the summer of 2015, I was drawn viscerally by the tactility of the books. I returned the following summer to spend three days trying to capture the magic of the shop with audio and video. The raw footage was set aside for several years as I completed editing a feature-length documentary. Then magically, Christina Carroll, a former student, came to me looking for a video editing project, and thanks to her, the film was completed. Alice Apley, who introduced me to bookartbookshop in the first place, made the end titles. While the camera can never capture the tactility of the books, it can help us reflect on what the digitization of culture and the pandemic have taken away from us.

The footage was shot during the summer of 2016 with the Panasonic GH4 with a Olympus ED 12-40mm f/2.8 lens and a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens adapted with a Metabones Ultra adapter. I recorded most of the dialogue and all of the ambient sound with an Audio Technica BP 4029 MS stereo short shotgun microphone on the camera or hand-held with a pistol grip; the interview with Natalie D’Arbeloff was recorded with a Tram TR-50 lav, both were recorded with a Tascam DR-40 recorder, double system. I did both the sound and camera on my own.